Reading the World in the Word: The Possibilities for Literacy Instruction Framed Within Human Rights Education

Abstract

The purpose of this critical ethnography was to investigate the experiences of teachers and students when literacy instruction was framed within human rights education. Informed by cosmopolitan and critical socio-cultural theory incorporating Freirean concepts of critical literacy and praxis, this study highlights the experiences of two servant leader interns (teachers) and sixteen scholars (students) participating in human rights education sessions within the context of a Children's Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom School. Data sources included semi-structured and informal interviews, scholar and intern artifacts including multimedia projects, and recorded classroom discussions. Data were analyzed utilizing Michel Foucault's concept of "regime of truth" in order to examine how the CDF Freedom School and Human Rights Education articulated notions of freedom, knowledge, rights and power as a counter-narrative to the dominant discourse in literacy education. The findings indicate that while both discourses sought to empower students through literacy and in learning of their rights, the particular naming of literacy, identity and rights within each were constraining as well as liberating for the participating scholars. A key implication of this study is the need for a cosmopolitan critical literacy in both discourses that recognizes the need for global and local literacies, identities and rights for 21 st century adolescents.

Transfer of Instructional Practices from Freedom Schools to the Classroom

“…Most of the literature that does exist come from those within the Freedom Schools "family", meaning those who have some ties to the program. However, all research present accredit Freedom Schools in changing the views that young people, particularly those of color, have regarding reading (Jackson, 2009;Smtih, 2010;Dunkerly, 2011;Groenke, Bennett, Hill, 2012;Watson, 2014).…”